Canyon Creek To Wasootch Peak

We three, and a dog, left Canyon Creek off Powderface Trail at about 7.45 am on June 9 planning to traverse all the ridges and peaks between us and Baldy Pass. About two kilometres up Canyon Creek at the first major fork we turned right. Here our paths diverged somewhat, with Marc and I heading straight up the ridge to our right, while Doug, whose knees were paining in anticipation of a lot of scree bashing, continued up the drainage. Marc and I hiked up to a minor summit on the ridge (82J10, GR436422) and then followed the ridge first north then west to meet up with Doug on another minor summit (GR413443). The only difficulty we encountered was a series of gendarmes on the ridge at around GR421440. We got around these by dropping down a couple of hundred feet, traversing across loose slabs and then regaining the ridge. Doug meanwhile turned right at the next forks on the creek and followed this valley all the way up to the col at the head of the valley and met up with us on the 8,300 foot summit (2530m).

Unfortunately, the terrain between this summit and the next peak along the ridge to the northwest is bristling with cliffs. We were stopped a short way down from the peak by a cliff band, and it appeared that the only way to continue towards Baldy Pass would be to drop right down into the valley to the west and grovel back up on the north side of the next summit. This really did not seem like much fun, so we decided to turn south and head towards Wasootch Ridge instead. We hiked along the ridge and over another small 8,400 foot summit and then dropped down snow slopes to the head of the valley on the west.

Then it was back up again to a short northerly trending ridge above Porcupine Creek, which we followed to a small blip on the ridge to the east of Wasootch Ridge. From here we saw that we could have stayed high and got to the same location by going over the next minor summit to the south. In deteriorating weather we descended to a col, then scrambled the final 600 feet up to the summit of Wasootch Ridge. Hiking out down Wasootch Ridge we were treated to horizontal rain, snow, graupel and howling winds. We got out to the road at about 6.00pm and staggered down the road to our second car at Baldy Pass trail head.